Integrated graphics vs HD3650 512 MB AGP

[Moonstick2]

It's been (for various reasons) over five or six years since I last built our computer, and I'm beginning to hanker after a rebuild. The total budget (~£500+) will take 6-12 months to put aside, but I'm toying with the idea of carrying out most of the build earlier and running on integrated graphics until the rest (graphics card, extra SDD/HDD, upgraded case fans etcetera) later on down the line. The question is whether this is worthwhile doing or not.

To elaborate more:

The current system is:
Pentium E5200 OC @ 3.00 GHZ
AsRock Dual-VSTA board (BIOS updated to run Wolfdale at the correct frequency)
2 x 2 GB DDR2
Asus Radeon HD3650 512 MB AGP (remember that?)
2 x PATA HDDs
2 x PATA optical drives (DVD-ROM, DVD-RW)
Akasa 400 W Pax Power PSU

1 x external USB 2.0 HDD
Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit also available)
1980 x 1080 HDMI monitor

The AsRock board has a PCI-E slot but it's highly doubtful that it will work with the latest cards. It has SATA but only 1.5 and the VIA chipset can't talk to faster drives unless you can physically jumper them down to 1.5 (no auto-negotiation or whatever it is), which rules out all 6.0 drives that I can see. New motherboards obviously don't include AGP or PATA, so if I want to upgrade anything I basically have to do the lot.

Now the planned eventual system will be:
Intel i3 4160/i5 4440 (i7 doesn't seem worth it?)
H97 board (not overclocking), 4 DIMMs
2 x 2 GB DDR3 (possibly 2 x 4 GB if the prices come down, otherwise 4 x 2 GB in future)
Radeon R9 270 2 GB or higher
1 x ~256 GB SSD
Extra SSD or HDD, depending on budget and need.
SATA optical drive
650+ W PSU

As suggested at the beginning, I'm toying with the idea of doing the upgrade in stages: motherboard, CPU, memory, SSD, cheap optical drive first, then getting the benefit of those for a good few months before eventually upgrading to a graphics card (and necessarily better PSU), plus possible memory/extra drive etc. This would cost £280-£350 (depending on the processor), which would be affordable in four or five months, giving seven to eight months to save for the rest (nonlinear saving!)

The overriding question is, will the integrated graphics in a Core i3 or i5 be at least as good as the HD3650 512 MB AGP? The tomshardware graphics chart suggests it should be better, but several sites/people claim that integrated graphics even today can't beat an average discrete card from years ago. Is this really true, or is it just that innate 'integrated always equals bad' mentality that meant I only finally turned off my Soundblaster Live when Windows 7 wouldn't play nice with it?

The most that's asked of the current system is Half-Life 2 at very high settings, no AA, 1080p which it manages perfectly well, and World of Tanks which currently runs in low settings (not tried higher, keep meaning to), ~40-50 fps, 1080p. Newer games can happily wait until the discrete card is installed, but there's little point in me spending the money now if it means taking a hit on these two things. If those two games can run just as well as they do now, whilst day-to-day computing/programming/number-crunching stuff benefits from the better CPU/64-bit Win7/SSD then I'll be pretty happy, and might even be able to afford a better graphics card than if I were to wait until I did it all in one hit.

So will the upgrade to i3 or i5 still outweigh the loss of a discrete AGP card?
Is the i5-4440 @ £135 worth it over the i3-4160 @£84, taking into account what I'll be using it for now and in the future?
Or would I be best just saving up and doing the whole upgrade in up to a year's time?
(I'm doubting that X99/DDR4 is going to be affordable by then.)

All thoughts welcome!

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... here is the passmark on your AGP http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=Mobility+Radeon+HD+3650 The CPU/GPU/IGT http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+4400 http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+4600 will give you better results untill you purchase a PCIe card. The Intel CPU's have different HD graphics models.

 

[Moonstick2]

Thanks for that, and it does look promising but in a way those benchmarks highlight the trouble I'm having confirming that the Intel HD graphics are at least as good as I have currently.

See, the link you provided is for the Mobility Radeon HD3650 whereas I've got the Radeon HD3650 AGP, which appears on that list but a lot further down, scoring 145 vs the Mobility's 217. So the benchmark lists the Mobility as 50% better, yet reading around, the Mobility has the same RV6 architecture, same 128-bit bus but lower clock speeds (600/700 vs 725/800). The tomshardware heirarchy chart lists the Mobility HD3650 as one level down from my AGP with DDR3...

I found this spec-comparison site http://www.pc-specs.com/gpu/comparison-versus/1438/191/intel-hd-graphics-4600-desktop-vs-radeon-hd-3650 which suggests that the shader performance of the Intel HD gives it the advantage and ultimately puts it ahead of the Radeon - would that be fair to say?

Just trying to be sure, as obviously once I go down this particular road I'm pretty much stuck with it.

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... Yes... You will be getting DirectX 11 with the Intel and other HD1080P accelerated instruction sets, You will be surpised how well it Works and Looks streaming movies etc... and Also you get the advantage of setting your DDR3 shared memory above 512mb.

 

[Moonstick2]

Well that's good to hear, and what I partly figured/was hoping for.

I've since figured out I can get an i5/8GB/256 GB SSD combo in January for £365 if I include a case which would then mean being able to sell the whole old PC at £50-£100 or whatever I can get for it, since I've a spare PSU. I should then be able to survive on my current PSU and integrated graphics for a good few months after while saving for a ~£200 graphics card and suitable power supply. That'll be me sorted for another few years again most likely, barring an extra SSD/HHD.

Thanks for your help!